And in this intention she took a seat in full view of the altar where the priest was saying Mass.  Every shape and every colour of this church, its slightest characteristics, brought back an impression of long ago; the very wording of her childish thoughts was suddenly remembered; and she felt, whether she believed or disbelieved, that it was pleasant to kneel where she knelt when she was a little girl.  It was touching to see the poor folk pray.  The poor Irish and Italians—­especially the Irish—­how simple they were; it was all real to them, however false it may have become to her.  Her eyes wandered among the little congregation; only one she recognised—­the strangely thin and crooked lady who, as far back as she could remember, used to walk up the aisle, her hands crossed in front of her like a wooden doll’s.  She had not altered at all; she wore the same battered black bonnet.  This lonely lady had always been a subject of curiosity to Evelyn.  She remembered how she used to invent houses for her to live in and suitable friends and evenings at home.  The day that Owen came to St. Joseph’s before he went away on his yacht to the Mediterranean, he had put his hat on this lady’s chair, and she had had to ask him to remove it.  How frightened she had looked, and he not too well pleased at having to sit beside her.  That was six years ago, and Evelyn thought how much had happened to her in that time—­a great deal to her and very little to that poor woman in the black bonnet.  She must have some little income on which she lived in a room with wax fruit in the window.  Every morning and evening she was at St. Joseph’s.  The church was her one distraction; it was her theatre, the theatre certainly of all her thoughts.

But at that moment the new choir-loft caught Evelyn’s eye, and she imagined the melodious choirs answering each other from opposite sides.  No doubt her father had insisted on the addition, so that such antiphonal music as the Reproaches might be given.  Some rich carpets had been laid down, some painting and cleaning had been done, and the fashionable names on the front seats reminded her of the Grand Circle at Covent Garden.  Evidently the frequentation of St. Joseph’s was much the same as the theatres.  The congregation was attracted by the choirs, and, when these were silenced, the worship shrank into the mumbled prayers of a few Irish and Italians.  Evelyn wondered if the poor lady could distinguish between her father’s music and Father Gordon’s.  The only music she heard was the ceaseless music of her devout soul.

Was it not strange that the paper she had sent her father containing an account of her success in the part of Margaret contained also an account of his choir?  They had both succeeded.  The old music had made St. Joseph’s a fashionable church.  So far she knew, and despite her strange terror of their first meeting, she longed to hear him tell her how he had overcome the opposition of Father Gordon.